Melancholy Requiem
by Ebony Dagger
Summary: Collabrative fiction written with LMEevaYlainen at: www[.]fanfiction[.]net/s/8650668/1/Underground-Dawn


I was sitting on a comfortable chair in an uncomfortable room.

Off-white walls surrounded me, somehow pressing in despite the decorator clearly having attempted to make the relatively compact space seem open and airy. Large windows opened out to grey skies, too reminiscent of my past week to be comforting. And so there I sat, torn between wanting out of the almost claustrophobic feel of the room and wishing for no more reminders than necessary of my reason for being here.

She, the doctor, was persistent, I'd give her that. Sidhe scarlet hair stood out like a beacon amongst the boring colours surrounding us; the unforgiving black of the wooden desk and the harsh off-white of the walls hurt my eyes. It gave me something to focus on other than those too-perceptive hazel eyes. She shifted in her chair almost imperceptibly and tendons stood out in her neck as she concentrated on something out of my grasp.

My lips thinned slightly, turning my expression blank with a hint of stubbornness which I despised, but couldn't really change. I stared intently down at my dull green cords, toes in their heavy boots turned inwards in an age-old habit I could never quite break. I wasn't quite sure why I was here, but I knew the woman was a doctor, a shrink. I was afraid of those eyes, as though they'd look into my own and see too much that I didn't want her to know. Secrets were another habit of mine; I hoarded them as though they gave me power.

I smirked internally then, wishing I could let go of the melodrama inside my head. I wished to be important, and I seemed gifted with enough of a silver tongue that I could get away with making the simpler things in life sound important if that was what I wanted. It was patently ridiculous, and was one of my many flaws, and recently I'd had enough experience to truly know each and every one of those. I stared at the psychiatrist's red, red hair until my vision blurred and ignored everything else until my brain was quiet once again. Blinking, I forced myself to stop, putting my hands firmly in my lap and then trapping them, palm to palm, between my thighs, wondering what was going to happen. Having never had a reason to be in therapy before, I knew nothing about the actual procedure of it aside from what precious little a couple of years of Psychology classes had taught me; I knew you were supposed to talk about your problems, but I didn't particularly want to. One, she would probably land me in a mental institution so quickly I could turn to watch; two, because I simply found being sociable a chore.

I tensed as the shrink reached into a drawer and retrieved a document wallet, my eyes dropping again as I realised it was all her information about me. It was a sparse file, to say the least, but I knew to sort myself out, I had to make it grow. Hey, maybe there was something to all that rubbish people spouted about talking about your issues having a positive effect…I then realised the woman had been speaking as I'd been wrapped in my thoughts, a bad habit I couldn't seem to shake. At least something was constant. I cheered up a little and then her voice interrupted my thoughts, "What's happened in the 'past week'? You're here to talk to me, and I'm here to help. We can't do one without the other, so…"

She shrugged narrow shoulders and I blinked, a little disconcerted that her body flowed like a dancer's – or maybe a contortionist was a better comparison – as her legs shifted with her movement. I blinked and stared down at the scuffed toes of my boots, noting that I needed to polish them fairly soon. Sighing inwardly, I gave up procrastinating and took a breath to speak.

"F-field trip." Damnit, even I barely heard the whisper as it left my lips, so I tried again, "It was a field trip. We'd just finished exams at uni, graduation was a while away, so we decided to go camping in the wilds for a few weeks. Scotland, we figured was our best bet—"

I broke off, my eyes on the doctor's face as her lips parted as if to speak, "Who's we?"

I spoke shortly, tonelessly listing the names of the people I'd managed to make friends with throughout university as if they were strangers, "Finn. Alex. Sam. Liam. Joel. Joel didn't want to go, thought it was a waste of money, but I convinced him—convinced him it would be fun." My voice shook and I took a little breath, almost a gasp, and then told myself to stop being such an idiot. I hadn't escaped the mess of the last week only to cry like a child.

Swallowing hard, I opened my eyes a little wider and carried on in a low voice, "We left, I drove, went to this campsite we'd booked ahead of time, only when we arrived, they'd closed because of some sort of freak flooding."

I remembered seeing acres of flooded parkland, the water stagnant and beginning to smell, the earth sodden, turned into a treacherous bog. It would have probably been fatal to even make an attempt at crossing, so we'd sighed, packed our rucksacks and bodies back into the clown car – my Mum's car, Joel's nickname for it – and driven off, not quite sure where to go. We'd stopped at a service station to have coffee and regroup, and looked at a map. The map had been "borrowed" from my geography class several years back and had simply lain forgotten on my bookshelf until earlier that summer.

Blinking at the psychiatrist, I realised she was scribbling away, and that I'd been speaking out loud without noticing. She had tiny, copperplate handwriting, and wrote with a chewed black biro. Nice to know my shrink had bad habits as well, I thought wearily, wondering if I should trust her. I didn't really have much choice, I supposed, only the problem was that if I did trust her and something went wrong, I'd be paranoid about trusting anybody else. On the other hand, if I didn't trust her and nothing ever happened, I'd be paranoid and waiting for the other shoe to drop…yup, I definitely needed to talk to the nice doctor.

I rolled my eyes up thoughtfully, noting the smudges of water damage on the badly painted ceiling high above both our heads, and began to speak again, quietly. My voice sounded worn and tired, reflecting my attitude.

"I don't know what happened, but one minute we were perfectly on track, and the next the compass freaked out. It was spinning in circles, and my watch was doing the same thing. None of our phones worked, as far as we could tell, because when we tried to get signal, the only reply was a hissing, static noise that drove me up the wall.

"I just wanted to lie down and sleep, and then wake up feeling refreshed and somewhere that appeared on a map and didn't screw up my compass."

We'd set up camp when we realised we weren't getting anywhere, planning to try again when it was full daytime. Instead of separating like usual, all six of us squeezed into one of the three man tents, Joel and me holding hands tightly, as if that could save us from tomorrow.


End file.
